Are sexual abuse victims whingers? (Main Forum)

by Oh Yet We Trust, Brisbane, Sunday, August 29, 2010, 11:00 (993 days ago) @ Oh Yet We Trust
edited by Oh Yet We Trust, Sunday, August 29, 2010, 11:24

And there comes a point with all grievances when the public, having grown bored with victim groups' endless tales of woe and their apparent refusal to move on, grows weary of their whingeing.

Sometimes, though one knows that great wrongs have been done, a reaction can set in and one starts to wonder whether the complaints may not be overblown.

At the very least it becomes easy to tune out complainants. The Stolen Generation? They got their apology - get over it and get off my TV. James Hardie asbestos victims? They've been paid too, so ditto.

It is tempting to put the victims of abuse by Catholic clergy into that category. The Pope has apologised. The church has paid out compensation. Surely we should all, as the Prime Minister likes to say, move forward.

If only you knew how these paragraphs make me feel: As with Peter Singer, these are words I am sure many people think but do not dare articulate or say out loud.

It is this mentality within myself even which has held me back and continues to hold me back from submitting to the healing process because I continually feel guilty for wanting and needing this healing and for having taken 'time off' to do so. And yes, I have received a compensation payout but I still will be struggling: And yes I have received an 'apology' of sorts but not one which named what actually happened, more a general "I let you down" type, and my abuser, the only one I could contact, will still have a good life and be cared for. And yes, I have taken it on myself to find a doctor who knows what he is doing and to pay for it in part while the Australian taxpayer pays for the rest. And so, why am I upset when I read such lines as above? Because the shoe fits?????

This article is timely for me because I wrote only two days ago (before I read this) to my doctor, the following, in a fit of deep anxiety and guilt and need to know he would stand up for me, also to challenge him about his true beliefs - see I still can't trust - I just can't seem to get rid of the guilt feelings (partly because I have this perhaps misplaced belief that if all people were honest (including myself), they would say exactly what the above article says - but, see, this is part of a groove of thinking which is firstly based in the trauma of deep broken ability to trust and feel valued, but then supported by attitudes with which I was brought up and which for me, a male is also compounded by a macho- male mentality as well. Here is what I wrote to my doctor (and I share this as a way of enlightening those who may want enlightening, as to the inner thoughts of at least one abuse victim/survivor - and please understand that part of my process at least is my own 4 Ds (denial, deflection, doubt and disbelief - I still can't own what happened to me (I can for others - a bit odd but true, but not for me, emotionally/allow myself to feel or re-feel it at least - this process will be explained better below) and until I do I can't heal:

What would you say if you were in this situation: I am being attacked verbally/emotionally by so many people, mainly older men, who are saying to me, get on with your life, you're bludging, your indulging, you're not really that ill. I want to imagine what you would say to them if this were a real life situation - you know, perhaps someone from Centrelink trying to prove I am not 'deserving' of a pension and should be getting back to work. I can see you perhaps getting angry at them but I don't know what you would actually be saying.

His reply (in brief - we will discuss it further later):

You are genuinely traumatized by all that happened. You are genuinely ill and genuinely working on your recovery. With you all the way.

I need to elaborate:

Part of the affects of abuse is that you cannot really trust anyone - even those who might genuinely want to help. This often gets expressed in an attitude of constant need, need to be heard, need to find justice and yet even when these things are available (which is rare in the proper sense) they are still often viewed with suspicion and this then gets translated by others that the victim doesn't ever seem to be 'satisfied'. It is part of the complexity of the whole bloody psychological messed up patterns of thinking and feeling that go with childhood trauma of this sort, and the earlier the trauma the harder it is to unravel, not to mention the fact that many when they told (if they told) of the abuse where punished or told they were liars and so the ability to trust those who are supposed to be there for you is shattered even more, and more deeply and permanently. There are many deeply embedded thought patterns and behaviour patterns which have deeply grooved themselves into a victim's way of thinking and feeling and it takes a lot of time and effort to undo these, if they can be undone (for some, lifelong emotional maintenance/support is probably a more accurate description of the process of what some victims may end up needing - again, it depends so much at the age at which the traumas occurred).

To release the thought patterns (it has been explained to me) one needs to deal with the feelings; the thoughts are rooted in the feelings: Imagine if you will that the bad, destructive thought patterns are weed trees, deeply rooted in very hard dry soil and that that soil is the feeling centre: To then deal with the feelings (which are those of the actual feelings/experiences of the traumas when they occurred), is to soften the soil and thereby to weaken their grip on the roots of the weeds. Deal with the feelings and the thoughts have nothing more to hold on to and they just dissipate and lose their grip on your life.

Trouble is, very few people, particularly the church institution and those who may think the way in the article above, understand that their processes are not dealing with the feelings which have deeply embedded themselves into the victims' psyche - they don't know how to and perhaps it is not their role to do so - this is more the role of the healer, the therapist, the counsellor - but they must acknowledge or understand and believe in the process and let the victims know they do - this is very important - and they must get across the message that if all this process takes ex amount of time, money and effort, they will support it, and, facilitate it until the victims can say they have reached the point of peace and happiness and security that they deserve and are seeking.

But this does take so much time and effort and cost and there are so few truly capable of being such healers and believers and supporters and so, the victims are often caught in a cycle of their abuse trauma's grief and confusion and anger with no where to get off resulting in the appearance of being whingers, never satisfied, never compensated enough, ever angry at what was done to them, (and rightly so, until their pain has been resolved). But the attitude in the opening paragraph above only serves to exacerbate this.

One other thing I believe is very important to understand is that for victims who are caught up in this cycle of thought and feeling, for many it is so embedded it is all they know: It has driven them sub-consciously all their lives since their abuse, and as such, to be brave enough to come out into the light and to try to move beyond it all, to try to create a new way of existing, a new way of seeing themselves and life seems impossible and is an even very scary thing (without them realising it even) - better the devil you know type of thing - and it takes enormous psychological courage to take the steps necessary to begin the path towards healing: And so tell such people that they are ungrateful whingers or mental or ungrateful, whatever, is to prolong the whole process and even entrench more deeply, the inability to get out, to move forward, to heal: And, also, to say things is to reveal a total lack of understanding and compassion.

Like I said in my letter to the House of Representatives, it is a very messy and complex issue: Who has the courage and where-with-all to take it on? We victims are not an easy lot to deal with - this is part of the trauma and needs to be recognised as such, it is not part of our true personality - the one we want and still somehow believe to exist deep down, protected somewhere; it is not an excuse to call us 'mental'. Whole lives, past, present and future, have been deeply derailed and all the injured bodies still lie somewhere in the wreckage of it all: some are being rescued, others have died, others still lie in the wreckage waiting to be saved, screaming out and bleeding to death, others lie in shock, unable to move or call out, some have been out for a while but the memory traumatises them daily.

In short, the systems for full healing are not in place, they hardly exist to the point of resolution (ask almost any victim) nor yet does a proper understanding of sexual abuse and its effects on lives and society. It is a bloody mess and we so need someone to investigate what has happened, why it happened, what is happening as one does for any train wreck or human-made disaster. The church needs to step up as does the government so that this scourge can be thoroughly dealt with. A royal commission is what is needed - it's the only way to deal thoroughly and extensively with the whole issue.

I don't know if I have explained myself well here, but I do know inside me somewhere what I am trying to say and what I do believe so deeply to be true. But I also know all this may be just my experience of the whole process - never the less, I offer it as perhaps an aid to understanding for those interested.

Peace, please!

Stephen

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill